How to install Fuse ZX Spectrum emulator in Debian Wheezy Beta and Raspbian

On the Raspberry Pi site there is a thread about how to install this spectrum emulator in Arch. I figured it was time to have a go in Wheezy – just for the heck of it – and it worked. Not 100% – still can’t get it to make sound reliably and satisfactorily through HDMI, but I have managed to get it working well through the analog audio out – *so you can use headphones or speakers to get those primitive speccy sounds. :yes:

* This seems to work OK now.

The good news is it’s a lot simpler in the Debian Wheezy Beta as well. Just a couple of commands.

So, let’s get going…

Boot up your Pi into Debian Wheezy. Once logged in (command line), type

sudo apt-get install fuse-emulator-common

Y to confirm that you want it.

This then installs fuse-emulator-gtk, libaudiofile1, libspectrum8 and opense-basic

It also suggested installing spectrum-roms and fuse-emulator-utils.

I tried running it without installing these and a message came up about not using the original spectrum ROM. So I installed the extra packages with…

Changing the final 1 for a 2 would force HDMI – but this didn’t work for me. It only works on headphone socket for me – pity, but a step in the right direction. I’ll have to attach some speakers as the sounds of manic miner are a bit too raw for headphones.

Then, to get to the graphical user interface (GUI) type…

startx

Once you’re in LXDE, click the icon in the bottom left of the screen and select

games > Fuse Spectrum Emulator (GTK+ version)

This will fire up the emulator. First thing you’ll want to do is enlarge the display by clicking the maximize square in the top-right of the FUSE window.

Loading a game

Then click

Media > Tape > Open

Then browse to where your tzx files are and select one and click Open. If your tzx contains more than one file, choose the one you want and click open. Then you will get a blank screen, that’s rather puzzling until you realise all you’ve done is simulated putting a tape in the tape recorder. You still have to load it.

Type J (LOAD)

then CTRL+PP (“”) and press enter

Your game will load – simply follow the on-screen instructions to play it.

If the sound is too loud, options > sound and change beeper volume to a lower figure.

Thanks Ricardo. You want to automatically start the spectrum emulator when the Raspberry Pi boots up? OK. I have an idea how that might be done. Let me try it and I’ll be right back ;)

Hmmmm I was hoping it would be possible to run fuse without LXDE, but it fails. :(
So it looks as if you’re limited to forcing LXDE to start on boot. You can do that from the command linesudo raspi-config and choose start desktop on boot.

That’s only halfway though. The other half is to launch the spectrum emulator when LXDE starts.http://wiki.lxde.org/en/Autostart
That link should point you in the right direction, but you will need to change the wicd-client -n part.

Thanks for the info got it working, however when I maximise the fuse window (maximise the display step) the emulator is still only a small as it doesn’t also expand to full screen. Is there a setting that I’m missing. Have trawled the web but couldn’t find reference to this problem. Thanks in advance

You’ve got to realise this is a spectrum emulator, so the number of pixels on the screen is the same as it was on an old TV (~640 x 480?). I don’t think that can be changed. But there is a way round it if you log in via tightVNC, you can zoom the screen, which will make it bigger (but it will be a grainy, pixellated display). ;)

Ricardo, if you install fuse-emulator-sdl then you can run fuse without needing to start the x server, ldxe, desktop etc. fuse-sdl will run directly from the command line console.
This should make it easier to get it to automatically start on boot.

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